Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!rice!brazos.rice.edu!pete From: pete@titan.rice.edu (Pete Keleher) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: How to improve the Mac (was Re: Text file madness on the Mac.) Message-ID: Date: 7 Jan 90 16:51:31 GMT References: <2706@aecom.yu.edu> <5900@ncar.ucar.edu> <1998@eric.mpr.ca> <5915@ncar.ucar.edu> <8315@cbnewsm.ATT.COM> <6472@sun.acs.udel.edu> Sender: root@rice.edu Distribution: na Organization: Whatsamatta U Lines: 27 In-reply-to: weave@sun.acs.udel.edu's message of 7 Jan 90 00:05:28 GMT weave@sun.acs.udel.edu (Ken Weaverling) writes: > OK, what does the Mac need? Let's have a useful discussion and maybe, just > maybe, someone from Apple will say "Gee, neat idea" and implement it. > > 1) A command line window. Forget religous grounds against doing > this. It'd be useful in A LOT OF cases. > > 2) A job language. PC users shouldn't scoff too much here, BATCH is > ... Apple isn't unaware of this problem. Its precisely to make up for this sort of deficiency that MPW and the VERY powerful script language of SADE were created. Problem is, non-programmers as well as programmers who consider MPW a giant kludge (I admit I haven't used the newest version) are still out in the cold. A partial hack at a solution is on the way. Minix will be available RSN and will probably satisfy any UNIX user. It will run as an application and support the full generality of the csh, including regular expression matching, pipes, and a command language. Unfortunately, this still isn't what we want, because it's not an integrated part of the Mac OS. It is, however, probably as close to a solution as we'll ever get. -- Pete Keleher pete@titan.rice.edu